4×4 Offroad Driver

Genre: Off-Road Racing Game

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in the 4×4 OffRoad Collection bundle, along with 4×4 Offroad Driver 2.)

4×4 Offroad Driver, released on Nintendo Switch in 2022, is a Simulation-style Off-Road Racing Game that tasks you with getting through a series of obstacle courses as fast as you can without colliding with too many obstacles.

(Note: This game shares a lot in common with the trio of games that were in Speedster’s Collection, including this game having many of the same assets. As such, I have copied my review for those games here, changing it based on what is different this time)

The presentation here is mostly decent but unspectacular, with sufficient 3D visuals that get the job done, but are in no way impressive, and at times are outright baffling – exactly why do the rivers and streams in this game look like purple slime? In addition, there’s plenty of nasty pop-in and repeated slowdown too, and just overall this game is not very visually-appealing.

As for the gameplay, This game has players navigating through a series of rings set in an aforementioned off-road obstacle course, trying to reach an ending, where they must park, for some reason. This game seriously couldn’t just have you get to a finish line? Anyway, you’ll have to be mindful of your driving not just to get to your destination quickly, but because you can only take so much damage before everything ends in an outright fail.

Compared to many of the other “Driving Simulator” games produced by this developer, this game’s mix of speed and caution around difficult terrain actually makes sense, and the obstacle courses are varied enough to give this game a fair amount of variety.

Unfortunately, this game’s controls are just terrible. Your vehicles’ turning radius is restrictive, the brakes take far too long to kick in, and just overall everything here is far too stiff and clunky to be enjoyable. Also, this game makes the odd choice to make players manually switch to reverse instead of just making it tied to brake. And there are also odd design choices, such as having some levels start with you trying to race out of a parking lot.

Finally, this game’s $13 standard price is far too high. The gameplay is far too repetitive and simple, there’s no multiplayer, and everything seems overall pretty shoddy and poorly put-together. Of course, we all know that $13 price tag is just a placeholder to make the game seem like a really good deal when it frequently goes on sale, but the bottom-of-the-barrel $2 price tag really seems like it should have been this game’s normal price, especially since this developer is re-using assets across multiple games.

In the end, 4×4 Offroad Driver has some good elements, and this is a good use for this gameplay template that the developer has repeatedly copy-pasted into numerous games. However, the shoddy design, poor controls, lack of multiplayer, and ugly visuals all add up to a game that’s not worth its asking price. The $2 sale price, though? Hmm… maybe.

tl;dr – 4×4 Offroad Driver is a Simulation-style Off-Road Racing Game that has players navigating off-road obstacle courses. Unfortunately, the cars here do not handle well, and the game is far too lacking in options and content for its price. This game may be a decent time-waster if you get it on sale, but definitely don’t buy it at full-price.

Grade: C

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